Katrina is a Rorschach test

People see what they expect to see. Samizdata points us to one shallow pond:

And another thing to think about when we start pointing fingers is this. The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this.

Then who is? It seems to me that the very reason we create/acknowledge government is because it is the human organization best-equipped to handle national defense, which includes, in prospect, maintenance of environmental systems such as the wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi, wetlands whose existence would have mitigated the damage of Katrina. It's all well and good to use Katrina as example of how government is not perfect but it is really a waste of breath until you can offer an example of who would take charge of prevention & then recovery efforts over the size of a nice-sized region like England. Perhaps we'd have a free-market in emergency services...you'd be up on your roof amid the floodwaters and several helicopters would fly over and solicit your business and you'd chose the one who offered the best "package. No my libertarian friends, you won't be able to use Katrina to sell the libertarian viewpoint. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Now that doesn't mean that people shouldn't be prepared on their own to deal with emergencies. Of course they should. (Making Light has had some very good posts on Emergency preparedness at the level of the individual and I urge you to read them and, as well, act on them.) But the society at large has a critical role. I mean that's what the society at-large is there for! I will help when you are in trouble and you will reciprocate. It's called the social compact and it is to government only that we grant the police power to act in such emergencies to ensure that the various actors delivering aid can work without being shot etc etc. Unfortunately or not, there is, by definition, no one else to whom we can grant the police power except government -- for whoever has it does become the government.

Comments

[Perry de Havilland]

Except you have badly misunderstood the article. The emphasis should be the "...LIKE THIS".

To expect the state to be able to cope with a uniquely rare confluence of disasters like this pure utopianism. I am all for the state as 'nightwatchman' and that includes coming to the rescue of flood victims. However this whole affair has been an object lesson in why it is folly to just assume the state will be there to pick up the pieces when things go badly wrong. I do indeed think the state, cumbersome monster that it is, should have contingency plans for all manner of disasters but I also am all for 'society-at-large' looking to its own contingencies... but 'society-at-large' is not a synonym for The State. Society and state are quite different things, as Tom Paine has been pointing out since 1776.

Also if you think most people will come out of this with their trust in the wisdom of depending on the state *enhanced*, well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell you.

[ian]

Perry is always trying to sell that bridge...

[ian]

I should have added of course that this is not a 'confluence of disasters' - you cannot separate the storm from the levee failure from the flooding.

[Karol]

How could anyone look at the government response in Katrina and think we need more government?

As for who should/would handle, Radley Balko said it best:

The Army Corps of Engineers set out on the task of shoring up those levees on the outskirts of New Orleans in the 1960s. The federal government had taken responsibility for the system in the 1920s. Forty years later, after both parties have held both the White House and the Congress, that task was never completed. Despite, repeated warnings, we finally paid the price for massive government incompetence.

So what if government had never gotten involved? Does anyone think that if corporations with assets to protect in Southern Louisiana weren't protected by federalized flood insurance, and if the federal government hadn't assumed responsibility to keep Lake Ponchartrain at bay, it would have taken forty years to fix those levees? Anyone else suspect the levees would never have fallen into disrepair in the first place? My guess is that anyone with business in the area would have invested to protect his investment. There may still have been damage. But not wholesale devastation.

[JRoth]

Hey Karol-

Ask the good capitalists at Cantor Fitzgerald whether it was the infinite wisdom and capability of thye free market that landed them on the 94th floor of the World Trade Center?

Look fool, keep your premises straight. If enterprise is so all-powerful, if markets are so all-knowing, then, once the Feds failed to build an impregnable wall around New Orleans, the companies to which you ascribe such brilliance WOULD HAVE LEFT. Instead, they staiyed. Like the government, they assessed the risks, and were wrong. Show me companies that abandoned New Orleans because they saw a gov't unwilling/unable to protect their investments, and you might have an argument. In the meantime, you're just spouting more libertopian nonsense.

PS - Quick, name the worst flood in US history. What caused the Johnstown Flood? Oh yeah, an ill-maintained dam privately held by the greatest capitalists of the 19th century. Of course, it wasn't their asses on the line, so I guess your point stands - in libertopia, those with money will always come out on top.